Shopify Guides | Article 09

What Should You Check After Migrating to Shopify?

A practical post-migration checklist for checking catalogue data, checkout, payments, shipping, customer access, redirects, tracking and search visibility after an established ecommerce store goes live on Shopify.

Part of the Cape Wired Shopify Guides series.

The short answer

After migrating to Shopify, do not treat a successful launch page as proof that the migration is finished. The new store needs to be checked as a complete ecommerce operation: catalogue data, navigation, checkout, payments, shipping, taxes, order processing, customer access, emails, redirects, domain security, integrations, analytics and search visibility.

The highest-priority checks are the ones that can lose orders, misprice products, break fulfilment, strand existing customers or disconnect valuable old URLs. Cosmetic refinements can follow once the commercial and technical foundations are confirmed.

Treat launch as the start of verification, not the end of migration. Prove that customers can find the right products, pay the correct amount, receive the right delivery options and continue using the store normally.

Post-migration check 01

Check that the catalogue migrated correctly

Start with the product data because imported errors can affect pricing, purchasing, stock and fulfilment immediately. Shopify's WooCommerce migration guidance specifically recommends reviewing imported descriptions, images, variants, prices and search-engine information, and flags common problems such as unpublished products, missing details and failed variants.

Sample products from every meaningful part of the catalogue, not only the homepage bestsellers. Check:

Product titles and descriptions.

Images and image order.

Prices, compare-at prices and tax treatment where relevant.

SKUs and barcodes.

Weights and shipping-relevant data.

Inventory quantities and inventory locations.

Variants and option names.

Product status and sales-channel availability.

Vendors, product types, tags and metafields that the new theme or apps depend on.

Search-engine titles and meta descriptions on priority products.

Large stores should use a structured sample: high-revenue products, complex variants, low-stock products, bulky or unusual shipping items, tax-sensitive items, products with custom fields and products that were historically difficult to migrate.

Post-migration check 02

Check collections, filters, navigation and search

A migration can import product records successfully while still leaving customers unable to browse the catalogue properly. Shopify collections are not automatically equivalent to every WooCommerce category or taxonomy, so the storefront structure needs testing as a customer journey.

Main-menu routes reach the intended collections and pages.

Footer links point to the final Shopify URLs.

Collections contain the correct products.

Automated collection rules behave as intended.

Filters and product discovery options use the expected product data.

Store search returns sensible results for important product names, categories and common customer terms.

No internal navigation still points at old WooCommerce URLs.

Mobile navigation remains usable after the new hierarchy stacks or collapses.

If the migration revealed structural problems rather than simple import errors, refer back to the dedicated guides on Shopify collections and navigation instead of patching the homepage around a weak catalogue structure.

Post-migration check 03

Place real test orders through the complete checkout journey

Shopify recommends placing at least one test order during setup, and specifically notes that a test order can verify checkout, order processing, inventory, shipping, email notifications and taxes.

For an established migration, one happy-path order is not enough. Test the journeys that matter to the actual business.

A successful order.

A failed or declined transaction where the payment setup allows testing.

A refund and cancellation.

Full and partial fulfilment where relevant.

Discount codes and automatic discounts.

Free-shipping thresholds.

Gift cards or store credit if used.

Different customer types or markets where checkout behaviour differs.

Different shipping addresses, especially remote or high-cost zones.

Orders containing products with different tax or shipping characteristics.

Test mode should be handled carefully. Shopify notes that customers cannot place live orders while the relevant payment provider is in test mode, so do not leave a live store accidentally unable to take genuine payments.

Post-migration check 04

Verify payments and payout behaviour

A checkout that reaches the thank-you page is not the only payment check. Confirm that the chosen payment providers are live, authorised for the intended countries and configured the way the business expects.

The correct payment methods appear at checkout.

Shopify Payments or third-party gateways are live rather than left in test mode.

Authorisation and capture settings match the order-processing workflow.

Alternative and manual payment methods appear only where intended.

Fraud-review and order-hold processes are understood by the team.

Payout details and business/bank information are correct.

Any third-party transaction-fee implications have been included in the commercial model.

If the business operates across multiple markets, test payment availability from the customer perspective in those markets rather than assuming the domestic checkout configuration applies everywhere.

Post-migration check 05

Check shipping rates, delivery methods and fulfilment

Shipping is one of the easiest places for a migration to create commercially expensive mistakes. Shopify recommends testing shipping rates after they are configured, and a test order is the most direct way to see what the customer is actually offered.

Correct shipping zones exist.

Rates appear for the intended destinations.

Free-shipping rules work at the correct threshold.

Weight-, price- or carrier-calculated rules behave as intended.

Local delivery or pickup appears only where it should.

Products are stocked at the correct locations.

Fulfilment apps receive the correct order data.

Tracking numbers and fulfilment statuses flow back to Shopify correctly.

Split fulfilments or multi-location orders behave as expected where relevant.

Do not rely only on the Shipping and delivery settings screen. The meaningful test is what a customer sees at checkout and what the operations team receives after the order is placed.

Post-migration check 06

Check tax configuration against real order scenarios

Tax configuration is a business responsibility and should be reviewed for the locations and product types the store actually sells. Migration is not the moment to assume old WooCommerce tax behaviour has transferred simply because product prices look correct.

Tax registrations and regions are configured as intended.

Product taxability is correct.

Shipping tax treatment is correct where applicable.

Overrides or special product rules are still required and correctly configured.

International orders behave as expected for the selected markets and tax setup.

Displayed prices and checkout totals match the business's customer-facing pricing policy.

Use qualified tax advice where the business has complex cross-border or product-specific obligations. A post-migration checklist can verify behaviour; it should not invent the tax rules the business is legally required to follow.

Post-migration check 07

Test order processing and customer notifications

Shopify's WooCommerce migration guide recommends testing successful and failed transactions, refunds, cancellations, fulfilment and archiving, and notes that these actions expose the emails customers receive.

Check the full operational sequence:

New-order notifications reach the correct staff.

Order confirmation emails arrive and display the right branding and information.

Shipping confirmation and tracking links work.

Refund and cancellation notifications make sense to customers.

Reply-to and sender addresses are correct.

Customer-service contact details are current.

Custom notification templates still contain required order-status or tracking links.

Fulfilment partners receive the data they need to act on an order.

Shopify notification templates can be previewed and sent as test emails. That is worth doing even when the order flow itself works, because a migrated store can technically process orders while sending outdated branding, incorrect contact details or incomplete customer instructions.

Post-migration check 08

Check customer records and the account sign-in experience

Customer migration needs its own verification. Confirm that key customer fields have imported correctly and decide what existing customers need to do to access their account on Shopify.

If customer accounts rely on passwords, note that Shopify states passwords cannot be migrated from another online store through customer CSV import because they are encrypted outside Shopify. Current Shopify customer accounts can also use passwordless email verification, so the exact customer communication depends on the account model selected for the new store.

Customer names and email addresses imported correctly.

Marketing consent and tags are handled according to the migration plan and applicable privacy rules.

Customer metafields or segmentation data required by the business are present.

Account sign-in works with the chosen Shopify customer-account model.

Customers understand whether they need to activate, recreate or simply sign in to their account.

Historic orders or loyalty information that were promised to customers are available through the intended system.

Do not send a generic account-reset campaign until the account model and imported customer data have been tested with a small internal group.

Post-migration check 09

Verify the domain, primary-domain behaviour and TLS

After the domain is connected, test the real public addresses customers are likely to use. Shopify provides TLS certificates for domains added to the platform, but domain and certificate propagation still needs checking after the switch.

The intended custom domain resolves to the Shopify store.

The correct domain is set as primary.

Common domain variants redirect to the primary domain as intended.

HTTPS loads without certificate warnings.

Old platform DNS records that are no longer needed have been removed carefully.

Email-related DNS records still support the business's mail setup.

Sender-email authentication is configured so transactional messages are less likely to be treated as spam.

Shopify notes that TLS certificate issuance for a connected third-party domain can take time. If secure-connection errors remain after the expected provisioning period, investigate DNS and certificate-authority records rather than assuming the issue will resolve indefinitely.

Post-migration check 10

Test every important old URL redirect

Article 08 covers the mechanics of Shopify URL changes. After launch, the job is verification. Shopify explicitly recommends entering original URLs in a browser and checking that important old pages reach the intended Shopify destination.

Top organic landing pages.

Products with external backlinks.

High-traffic WooCommerce categories.

Crawl the new store for broken internal links and indexing mistakes

The new store should link directly to its final Shopify URLs instead of relying on redirects internally. A post-launch crawl can reveal old WooCommerce links, broken assets, duplicate paths and pages that are unintentionally difficult to crawl.

Internal 404s and broken links.

Old WooCommerce URLs still used inside products, collections, pages or blog posts.

Unexpected redirect chains.

Canonical tags on priority templates.

Pages unintentionally blocked or noindexed.

Orphaned products, collections or useful guides with no meaningful internal links.

Missing or incorrect page titles and meta descriptions on priority landing pages.

This check should complement, not replace, the old-to-new redirect map. The map tells you what should happen; the crawl tells you what the live store is actually doing.

Post-migration check 12

Verify Search Console, the sitemap and organic landing pages

Shopify automatically generates a sitemap.xml file and recommends verifying the store in Google Search Console and submitting that sitemap after launch. Search engines still need time to crawl and process the new store.

The correct domain property is verified in Google Search Console.

The Shopify sitemap has been submitted.

Priority products, collections, pages and blog posts appear in the generated sitemap where expected.

Indexing or crawl errors are reviewed after launch.

Important old URLs begin resolving to their intended Shopify replacements.

Organic clicks and impressions are compared with the pre-migration baseline rather than judged from a single day.

Do not use the first few days of search data as a final verdict. The useful signal is whether priority pages are being discovered, redirects are being followed and the new URLs begin to replace the old ones over time.

Post-migration check 13

Verify analytics, advertising pixels and consent behaviour

Tracking is particularly easy to break or duplicate during a platform migration because the old store may have placed scripts in theme files, checkout areas, tag managers or plugins.

Shopify now manages customer-event tracking through app pixels and custom pixels. Its pixel-migration guidance warns that duplicate tracking can happen when old code remains alongside the new setup, and that privacy settings can change which events are recorded.

Google Analytics is receiving the expected ecommerce events.

Advertising pixels fire once rather than multiple times.

Old scripts have been removed where the new app or pixel replaces them.

Consent behaviour matches the intended privacy setup.

Checkout and purchase events are recorded.

UTM parameters and campaign attribution behave as expected.

Internal test traffic is understood when comparing old and new reporting.

Do not expect every analytics platform to report identical numbers. The post-migration task is to confirm that the new implementation is technically sound and sufficiently continuous for business reporting.

Post-migration check 14

Test apps and connected business systems

A Shopify storefront can appear healthy while an important backend integration is failing. Every system that the business relies on should be tested with real or controlled data after go-live.

Email marketing and customer automation.

Accounting.

ERP or stock-management systems.

Warehouse and fulfilment integrations.

Shipping and carrier apps.

Reviews, loyalty and subscriptions.

Marketplaces and shopping feeds.

CRM and customer-service tools.

Product feeds and advertising catalogues.

Any specialist workflow retained from the WooCommerce operation.

For each system, confirm both directions where relevant: Shopify sends the expected data out, and external changes return to Shopify correctly.

Post-migration check 15

Review the storefront on real devices

A migration often includes a new theme, so post-launch QA should not stop at data and operations. Test the live storefront on the devices customers actually use.

Homepage and primary navigation.

Collection and search results.

Product pages with different image and variant configurations.

Cart and checkout entry points.

Forms, accordions, pop-ups and app blocks.

Mobile image cropping, button sizes and section order.

Policy and help pages.

Accessibility basics such as keyboard focus, labels and meaningful link text.

A page that looked correct in a draft theme can still behave differently once the live domain, tracking, apps and real catalogue are all active together.

After launch

What should you monitor during the first few weeks?

Not every issue appears on launch day. Keep a defined post-migration watch list rather than waiting for customers to report problems.

Area	Watch for	Possible signal
Orders	Unexpected drop or operational errors	Payment, checkout, stock or fulfilment issue
Conversion	Large unexplained change	Traffic mix, UX, checkout or tracking needs investigation
Support	Repeated customer questions	Account, delivery, policy or navigation friction
Inventory	Unexpected overselling or stock mismatches	Location or integration configuration issue
Search	Persistent losses on priority pages	Redirect, indexing, content or internal-link problem
404s	Old URLs still receiving visits	Missing or incorrect redirect
Analytics	Missing or duplicate events	Pixel or consent implementation issue
Feeds	Product disapprovals or missing items	Feed, market or product-data mismatch
Email	Delivery or automation problems	Sender authentication, trigger or integration issue

Prioritise continuity

What does not need to be perfect on launch day?

A post-migration checklist should prioritise commercial continuity, not turn launch into an excuse for endless cosmetic delay. Once orders, data, fulfilment, customer access, redirects and tracking are safe, some lower-risk work can continue after launch.

Minor typography or spacing refinements.

Low-priority content rewrites.

Future campaign landing pages.

Nice-to-have merchandising sections.

Non-critical app experiments.

Longer-term conversion tests.

Content-cluster expansion that is not required for migration continuity.

The principle is simple: fix anything that can lose revenue, data, customer trust or search continuity first. Optimise the new platform once the migration itself is proven stable.

Final sign-off

A practical post-migration sign-off checklist

Use this as the handover between migration work and normal ecommerce optimisation. Critical commercial functions should be signed off before lower-risk refinements become the priority.

Priority	Check	Sign-off question
Critical	Catalogue	Are key products, prices, stock and variants correct?
Critical	Checkout	Can customers complete representative orders?
Critical	Payments	Are live payment methods configured correctly?
Critical	Shipping	Are the right rates and methods offered?
Critical	Tax	Do tested orders calculate as intended?
Critical	Fulfilment	Do orders reach the right operational systems?
Critical	Domain / TLS	Does the public domain resolve securely?
Critical	Redirects	Do priority old URLs reach the correct new pages?
High	Customer access	Can imported customers use the intended account flow?
High	Notifications	Do customer and staff emails contain correct information?
High	Analytics	Are key events recorded once and with expected consent behaviour?
High	Search	Are sitemap, indexing and priority landing pages being monitored?
High	Apps / integrations	Do critical connected systems send and receive data?
Ongoing	Storefront QA	Is the live experience usable on mobile and desktop?

The Cape Wired view

A migration is complete when the operation is stable

The technical moment when a domain points to Shopify is only one milestone. For an established ecommerce business, the migration is complete when customers can shop normally, the team can process orders confidently, connected systems are working, valuable old URLs have continuity and the business can trust its reporting again.

That is why we prefer a staged sign-off rather than a single “site is live” check. Commercial-critical functions come first, followed by search and measurement continuity, followed by lower-risk optimisation.

This approach also makes post-launch problems easier to diagnose. If a store changes platform, theme, catalogue structure, analytics and marketing systems simultaneously, a documented checklist creates a record of what was tested and what still needs watching.

Final takeaway

So, what should you check after migrating to Shopify?

Check the parts of the store that can affect money, customers, operations and visibility first: product data, checkout, payments, shipping, tax behaviour, fulfilment, customer access, notifications, domain security, old URL redirects, internal links, analytics, Search Console and critical integrations.

Then monitor the first few weeks against the pre-migration baseline. A successful migration is not one with no post-launch tasks. It is one where the important risks were planned for, issues are found quickly, and the business can move from migration mode into normal ecommerce optimisation with confidence.

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Earlier in the migration process? Read How Do You Migrate from WooCommerce to Shopify Without Losing SEO? and What Happens to Your URLs When You Migrate to Shopify?